Understanding & Supporting Technology Use in Family Life

OverviewThrough the department of Human Centered Design & Engineering, I was able to participate in a directed research group under the supervision of Julie Kientz and Alexis Hiniker.

Problem StatementThe average screen-time usage by U.S. children (and adults) exceeds expert recommendations and is linked with increased risk of health effects, including aggressive behavior, disordered sleep, and social development problems.

Vision StatementDesign, implement, and evaluate novel technology-based interventions designed to help families understand, set, and achieve goals relating to technology use--specifically, to limit the amount of screen-time usage.

BackgroundThere were 8 members in the research group. The group split into two--group 1 investigated technology interventions for teen+ aged users while group 2 investigated interventions for school-aged children. The intervention for toddlers had already come to fruition by Alexis Hiniker, so that population was not examined for the purpose of this research. I was a part of group 2. Ultimately, group 2 worked on a prototype for a mobile intervention called PlayTime.

PlayTime is a mobile app that allows parents to monitor and control their children's screen-time usage. In the parents' view, there are options to view statistics about how many minutes their children are using a specific app. Parents have the ability to virtually set time and app restrictions, as well as achievements on their children's devices. An example of an achievement could be "Child X must play a math game for 30 minutes to unlock game Z." On the other hand, children have the view of a gamified monitoring app where they get rewards for good technology use behavior. The more achievements children obey, the more desired games get unlocked for a certain amount of time. Children can move up levels to unlock more enticing games as they complete more achievements.

My Role

Despite not having taken any human-centered design classes and being the only undergraduate at the time of the research, I had responsibilities of a UX Researcher and Designer.

A few of my responsibilities included: searching the internet to gather information/inspiration from similar apps, participating in affinity analysis, creating wireframe sketches, sourcing research participants, conducting usability testings and requirements gathering, and also contributing to hi-fi mockups.

ReflectionGiven that this was my first user-centered design project, things went a lot better than I expected. As the only undergraduate, I was intimidated by the knowledge and experience that the graduate students had. But I soon learned that this was an advantage because they welcomed me under their expertise. They trained me the basic skills to get me up to speed with how to create simple pieces such as a wireframe and mock-up.

If I could go back and change one thing, it would be to offer more design ideas because even if they weren't good ideas, I would have gotten constructive feedback from my peers which would have exposed me to 1) how to offer constructive criticism, and 2) how to receive constructive criticism. Reflecting back now, learning how to offer and receive criticism is an extremely valuable skill in the world of UX because that's how we, as designers, improve. We help each other help the world.